Picasso, Primativism, Paint, and Pastels

I saw this project on A Glimmer of Light and decided it would be a fun project to do with my 5th graders. They get so caught up in making things realistic and perfect, this project encourages them to do just the opposite and let the funky chicken out. And while we were working on these, I remembered another chicken project I have done with Kindergarten and thought it would be a great time to review color-mixing with them and then hang the Kinders’ and the 5th grader’s work together!

First the 5th grade work:

Are these not hilarious?! I love them and the kids loved them too.

Here are some kinder-chickens.

  
And here is the final bulletin board with bothe grade’s artwork!

Color Mixing Castles

My first graders have absolutely loved making these colorful castles and they went right along with the kids fairytale unit in their classrooms. We watched several YouTube videos, our favorite being The Color Song by Scratch Garden, before we started the project.

I called them up to a group table four kids at a time to make their castles. While they were waiting and after they finished, they had a color-mixing math sheet to work on or a fairytale word find. When they finished that, they could turn it over and draw anything they wanted on the back. I suggested their favorite fairytale character.

I dropped little blobs of the primary colors along the bottom of the paper (3 tiny blobs of each color) and then they scraped with thick pieces of tag board or cardboard. I told them not to scrape all the way to the top and make the towers different levels. I helped them with the cone-esque roofs. They were totally enthralled with scraping the colors and seeing them mix. The next class was spent adding details and characters and background. Here’s a short clip of a student scraping the paint.